these family affairs smoothed over—as, Lord, many other family affairs equally has been, and equally will be, to the end of time.”
With this peroration, Mr. Bucket, buttoned up, goes quietly out, looking steadily before him as if he were already piercing the night in quest of the fugitive.
His first step is to take himself to Lady Dedlock’s rooms and look all over them for any trifling indication that may help him. The rooms are in darkness now; and to see Mr. Bucket with a wax-light in his hand, holding it above his head and taking a sharp mental inventory of the many delicate objects so curiously at variance with himself, would be to see a sight—which nobody does see, as he is particular to lock himself in.
“A spicy boudoir, this,” says Mr. Bucket, who feels in a manner furbished up in his French by the blow of the morning. “Must have cost a sight of money. Rum articles to cut away from, these; she must have been hard put to it!”
Opening and shutting table-drawers and looking into caskets and jewel-cases, he sees the reflection of himself in various mirrors, and moralizes thereon.
“One might suppose I was a-moving in the fashionable circles and getting myself up for Almack’s,” says Mr. Bucket. “I begin to think I must be a swell in the Guards without knowing it.”
Ever looking about, he has opened a dainty little chest in an inner drawer. His great hand, turning over some gloves which it can scarcely feel, they are so light and soft within it, comes upon a white handkerchief.
“Hum! Let’s have a look at you ,” says Mr. Bucket, putting down the light. “What should you be kept by yourself for? What’s your motive? Are you her ladyship’s property, or somebody else’s? You’ve got a mark upon you somewheres or another, I suppose?”